“Come,” he said, in a cheerful tone, rising from his chair, “all will yet be well. We have two months, three months before us. It is more than I need . . . on condition, of course, that I am unhampered in my movements. And, for that, you will have to withdraw from the contest, you know.”
“How do you mean?”
“Yes, you must disappear for a time; go and live in the country. Have you no pity for your little Jacques? This sort of thing would end by shattering the poor little man’s nerves.... And he has certainly earned his rest, haven’t you, Hercules?”
The next day Clarisse Mergy, who was nearly breaking down under the strain of events and who herself needed repose, lest she should fall seriously ill, went, with her son, to board with a friend who had a house on the skirt of the Forest of Saint-Germain. She felt very weak, her brain was haunted by visions and her nerves were upset by troubles which the least excitement aggravated. She lived there for some days in a state of physical and mental inertia, thinking of nothing and forbidden to see the papers.
One afternoon, while Lupin, changing his tactics, was working out a scheme for kidnapping and confining Daubrecq; while the Growler and the Masher, whom he had promised to forgive if he succeeded, were watching the enemy’s movements; while the newspapers were announcing the forthcoming trial for murder of Arsène Lupin’s two accomplices, one afternoon, at four o’clock, the telephone-bell rang suddenly in the flat in the Rue Chateaubriand.
Lupin took down the receiver:
“Hullo!”
A woman’s voice, a breathless voice, said:
“M. Michel Beaumont?”